There is known an image sensing apparatus which displays, on a liquid crystal display, information (e.g., a menu) for selecting photographing conditions such as a photography mode, image quality (e.g., high or low), shutter speed (exposure time), F-number, exposure compensation, and the like to make a photographer select or set a desired photographing condition, or displays the current photographing conditions or the state of the image sensing apparatus. Examples of image sensing apparatuses are a silver halide camera which optically records an image on a film, an electronic camera (digital camera) which electronically records an image on an electronic recording medium (memory medium such as an EEPROM or hard disk), and the like.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-284774 discloses a character display method which facilitates selection of a desired character string from a plurality of character strings (items), and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-134262 discloses an image display method which takes into consideration the visibility of characters when a composite image containing the characters is scaled. Note that both examples are not applications to an image sensing apparatus.
Along with a recent increase in functionality of an image sensing apparatus, information for selecting photographing conditions in the image sensing apparatus or information indicating the photographing conditions and the state of the image sensing apparatus increases. Increasing visibility and displaying much information within a physically limited display area are incompatible with each other. Whether to give high priority to visibility or the amount of information depends on the preference or application purpose of a photographer. It may be impossible to satisfy all photographers in all environments.